Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A theme is usually defined as a message, statement, or idea, while a motif is simply a detail repeated for larger symbolic meaning. In other words, a narrative motif—a detail repeated in a pattern of meaning—can produce a theme; but it can also create other narrative aspects.
Paraklausithyron (Ancient Greek: παρακλαυσίθυρον) is a motif in Greek and especially Augustan love elegy, as well as in troubadour poetry. The details of the Greek etymology are uncertain, but it is generally accepted to mean "lament beside a door", from παρακλαίω, "lament beside", and θύρα, "door". [1]
Motifs may also be used to establish mood (as the blood motif in Shakespeare's Macbeth), for foreshadowing (as when Mary Shelley, in Frankenstein, mentions the moon almost every time the creature is about to appear), to support the theme (as when, in Sophocles' drama Oedipus Rex, the motif of prophecy strengthens the theme of the ...
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a central topic, subject, or message within a narrative. [1] Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject". [2] Themes are often distinguished from premises.
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
In medieval Persian poetry, ubi sunt is a pervasive theme in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say: Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? And this first Summer month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshýd and Kaikobád away. (tr. Edward Fitzgerald)
A motif may be repeated in a pattern or design, often many times, or may just occur once in a work. [1] A motif may be an element in the iconography of a particular subject or type of subject that is seen in other works, or may form the main subject, as the Master of Animals motif in ancient art typically does.